ABC's Nightline special episode on Apple's production line offered an inside look at the company's supply chain but revealed few surprises, though it did show that the iPhone, with 141 separate steps that go into its production, is practically a handmade device.

Apple granted reporter Bill Weir permission to go inside Foxconn's factories to see the working conditions as its products were being made for the 30-minute broadcast. However, initial response to the story was that it revealed hardly anything new about the situation.

The Verge put together a list of the most interesting facts from the show, noting that perhaps the most interesting revelation was that a Foxconn executive said the manufacturer would welcome demands from Apple to double pay for its workers.

The report also noted that an iPhone takes 141 steps to make, while an iPad takes five days and passes through 325 hands during production. Foxconn manages to produce 300,000 camera modules for the iPad daily.

Workers at the manufacturer pay for their own food, roughly $0.70 per meal, and pay $17.50 a month to share a company dorm room with five to seven others. Wages were apparently $1.78 an hour and new workers were required to go through three days of training and "team building" exercises before starting work.

Weir also interviewed Fair Labor Association president Auret van Heerden. According to him, Apple paid $250,000 to join the association and is also paying for the audit of Foxconn's facilities. The iPad maker announced last month that it was the first technology company to join the FLA. The association began its first inspections last week, with van Heerden noting that Foxconn's facilities are "first class" and "way above" the norm.

Days before the show aired, Nightline and Weir promised viewers a "fascinating look into a hidden corner of our world" through the report.

"We will show you how your iPad, your iPhone, your MacBook is made, and we will meet the people who made them," he said in a teaser. "We'll show you how these folks come on buses, sometimes for days, to travel to the Foxconn gates, desperate for a chance to wipe a screen or solder a chip for 10 hours a day at less than $1.50 an hour."

Good question. Since Foxconn make products for many different companies... are the workers who assemble Apple products treated differently than workers who assemble produces for Nintendo, Dell, HP, Vizio, Toshiba, etc?

Perhaps some Chinese nationals can fill in some unknowns about labor laws:

What is the percentage increase for OT?

When does OT start?

How many hours a week do they work?

Ballpark estimate of income taxes?

At $1.78 per hour for a 60 hour work week that's $106.8 per week or $459.24 per month.

Now taking 70¢ per meal 3x a day for 30 days is $63 a month for food plus $17.50 for lodging is $80.5 in base expenses.

That tentatively leaves $378.74 per month in profit which is $4,544.88 in savings for a year. That's hard work and not much fun but I don't think the job is more time consuming than cruise ships and from what I can tell they don't pay much better. The only difference is they do get tips and they do seem to work 3-6 month shifts on average before taking some time off. They also seem to work 7 days a week most of the time while I assume Foxconn workers get a day off.

it's certainly not a job I would want but I also wouldn't want a job working in retail or in the food industry, again, as I did that in my youth for little pay for rent that took me about 2 weeks of earnings to save up for. Back then I could also have a great night out on $20. "It was the best of times, it was the worse of time" is apropos.

Very few spoiled Americans will ever do a repetitive job assembling gadgets by hand all day..even at the standard American minimum wage. That's one of the many reasons why those manufacturing jobs ain't coming back here in the States. Apple can never find the 200,000 or more people needed to assemble their products here in the U.S. Fact is most Americans would rather work at McDonalds flipping burgers than work in a electronics manufacturing plant.

Imagine Americans working on those assembly lines, all you'll hear is bitching and moaning.

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The Verge put together a list of the most interesting facts from the show, noting that perhaps the most interesting revelation was that a Foxconn executive said the manufacturer would welcome demands from Apple to double pay for its workers./ ][/URL]

Slight omission in that Bill Weir added 'if Apple offered to pay for the increases'. That was a rather stupid question on his part. Why would Foxconn say no to a doubling of wages if Apple was going to pay for the raises?

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." Douglas Adams

Slight omission in that he added 'if Apple offered to pay for the increases'. That was a stupid question on ABCs part. Why would Foxconn say no to a doubling of wages if Apple was going to pay for the raises?

There are 400k employees working on Apple's products, right?

400,000 x $1.78 x 60 x 52 = $2.22 billion a year cost on top of what they already pay to Foxconn.

No wonder the Chinese are begging to get jobs. It's like when Henry Ford raised the mininum wage for his factory worker.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

Perhaps some Chinese nationals can fill in some unknowns about labor laws:

What is the percentage increase for OT?

When does OT start?

How many hours a week do they work?

Ballpark estimate of income taxes?

The Nightline program answered most of your questions:
* OT is 1.5 times base or 2 times base under some circumstances.
* OT starts at 40 or 50 hours a week
* Hours per week does vary depending on production demands, however most workers will often put in 60 to 80 hours per week
* Based on the wages paid before the recent wage increase, a worker needs to earn 87 hours of overtime per month to even qualify to pay income taxes.

Hope that gives you some answers you can work with.

"That (the) world is moving so quickly that iOS is already amongst the older mobile operating systems in active development today." — The Verge

Slight omission in that Bill Weir added 'if Apple offered to pay for the increases'. That was a rather stupid question on his part. Why would Foxconn say no to a doubling of wages if Apple was going to pay for the raises?

The Foxconn manager damn near shit his pants with excitement at the very thought of everyone getting double wages.

"That (the) world is moving so quickly that iOS is already amongst the older mobile operating systems in active development today." — The Verge

The Nightline program answered most of your questions:
* OT is 1.5 times base or 2 times base under some circumstances.
* OT starts at 40 or 50 hours a week
* Hours per week does vary depending on production demands, however most workers will often put in 60 to 80 hours per week
* Based on the wages paid before the recent wage increase, a worker needs to earn 87 hours of overtime per month to even qualify to pay income taxes.

Hope that gives you some answers you can work with.

Thanks for the info. I hope more of the other details can get answered. Perhaps even someone who knows someone that has worked at Foxconn.

Good question. Since Foxconn make products for many different companies... are the workers who assemble Apple products treated differently than workers who assemble produces for Nintendo, Dell, HP, Vizio, Toshiba, etc?

In the other parts of Foxconn there is this guy that beats a big drum that everyone has to row in sync with. Stun guns applied randomly keeps everyone working feverently on the edge of their chairs. The sign above their work area reads, (Google Translation) "Work will make one Free."

"That (the) world is moving so quickly that iOS is already amongst the older mobile operating systems in active development today." — The Verge

Lets see. They get $178 an hour. X that by lets say 12 hours? They get $21.36 a day. Now assuming they work 5 days a week witch they may not as they may work 4 on 3 off. so lets go with 4 on. X that they get $85.44 a week. Now X that by 4 and they will get $341.00. I would assume that taxes are taken out. I googled that and it is 26.8%. So lets take taxes out and that leaves $273.40 minus $17.00 = 256.4. Meals are about $63.00 a month. And expenses lets say $40.00 and we have $216.00. That gets sent to their families. 6 Years ago this never existed over there. Its only because of the protests of the workers such as hurling them selves to their death that improved the working conditions. Other wise there would not be so many people flocking to the factory to get work.

I am assuming there may be some one who will try and correct me on my math. I actually rounded it off. So you can correct all you want I don't give a shit.

That tentatively leaves $378.74 per month in profit which is $4,544.88 in savings for a year.

Note: I've rounded the numbers below to the nearest 10, 100 or 1000 as appropriate.

And to put that in perspective, a $0.70 meal would cost $10 here. So multiply their income by 15x and they save $68,000 a year in comparison to what someone here would save with that level of pay and expense. Their hourly wage, based on the 15x multiplier would be $26.70 or a bit over $55,000/yr.

They pay $260 in rent in comparison to us.

Their total monthly expenses are about $1200 in comparison, while their income is more than $4200 (with no overtime).

Their rent is less than 10% of their income. This is EXCELLENT. Financial applications look for 25% or lower (some 33% or lower).

Based on those calculations, the problem isn't the pay. It's the hours.

Well, on one hand, I know there are fresh out college kids spending up to 50% of their wage on rent in NYC.. These Chinese workers share a room with 5-6 other roommates, there is no private room to speak of (which kinda reminds me of the NYU freshmen dorms that cost $1000+/month)

I watched the video and it seems that Apple's presence in China has made it better for everyone, not worse. Weir was upfront about their board member and affiliation with Disney.

PS: How much do people in the military make per hour? How many hours a week do they work in boot camp? How many people bunk in the same building? That's about 12 to 16 weeks, right?

Quote:

Originally Posted by mnb

Note: I've rounded the numbers below to the nearest 10, 100 or 1000 as appropriate.

And to put that in perspective, a $0.70 meal would cost $10 here. So multiply their income by 15x and they save $68,000 a year in comparison to what someone here would save with that level of pay and expense. Their hourly wage, based on the 15x multiplier would be $26.70 or a bit over $55,000/yr.

They pay $260 in rent in comparison to us.

Their total monthly expenses are about $1200 in comparison, while their income is more than $4200 (with no overtime).

Their rent is less than 10% of their income. This is EXCELLENT. Financial applications look for 25% or lower (some 33% or lower).

Based on those calculations, the problem isn't the pay. It's the hours.

Is a general multiplier across the board a fair measure? I mean, Americans pay a certain amount for rent plus utilities, but then to get to work the culture commonly demands payment by some form of transportation either public or private. A car has fuel, repair, taxes and insurance, not to mention the initial investment and payments. All that adds into their base living expenses.

Plus I know I people that work a 40 hour week, but it's salaried it's more like 50 or 55, and that doesn't include commute times of an hour in each direction. Now I will they say they all make well above even the US average but that's still a lot of time spent. I've heard on this forum many times over the years how Americans are too obsessed with work and money.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

Well, on one hand, I know fresh out college spending up to 50% of their wage on rent in NYC.. These Chinese workers share a room with 5-6 other roommates, there is no private room to speak of (which kinda reminds of the NYU refreshmen dorms that cost $1000+/month)

What struck me as stressful was the lack of personal space for making your own in the dorms.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

Very few spoiled Americans will ever do a repetitive job assembling gadgets by hand all day..even at the standard American minimum wage. That's one of the many reasons why those manufacturing jobs ain't coming back here in the States. Apple can never find the 200,000 or more people needed to assemble their products here in the U.S. Fact is most Americans would rather work at McDonalds flipping burgers than work in a electronics manufacturing plant.

Imagine Americans working on those assembly lines, all you'll hear is bitching and moaning.

that's not necessarily true. Many of my high school buddies worked under minimum wage (for their family biz). I think there are lots of young kids fresh out of high school or college willing to work very low wage jobs to learn new skill. It just doesn't make any sense for employers to risk hiring someone so unskilled & inexperienced, especially given the minimum wage and labor laws, etc.

The workers are getting paid just fine, especially with the recent wage increases by Foxconn.

It is partly simple supply & demand, and it seems like there's plenty of people who are looking to get jobs at Foxconn and other places like it. The job is not a very skilled one and I'd say that their wages are in line with the type of job that they are performing combined with the country that they are in. It's a manufacturing job, Foxconn is not looking to hire rocket scientists.

It would be wrong to pay them too much, as it would upset the wage balance that people in other professions in China make. Somebody making $1.78 an hour for a manufacturing job in China is obviously not the same as somebody making $1.78 if they happened to be in the US. The relative purchasing power of somebody in China making $1.78 represents a much larger dollar figure if we are to compare that to the US purchasing power of somebody making $1.78 an hour.

So, in conclusion, everything is just fine and dandy over there in China.

Any ignorant person whining about any Chinese Foxconn workers who actually have jobs and are making the equivalent of $1.78 in their own country's currency should think about the many millions of more people in their own country (the USA of course) who aren't even making $ 0.01 an hour.

I still think that anybody who signed that petition should be banned for life from ever owning any Apple products again, as they were engaged in an ignorant, slanderous and lying, malicious campaign against Apple. Maybe Apple should sue those fools for defamation and not just Proview.

There are a lot of people here who are making calculations to demonstrate that their salary is equivalent to minimum wage workers in the U.S. based on the cost of living in China. People are doing things like equating a $10 US meal to a 70 cent meal in China, or how workers are only spending 10% of their income on their housing compared to an expectation 0f 25% or more in the U.S.

I'm assuming that most of the people who are forming these kinds of calculations have never lived in a developing country, or perhaps if you did, you were still getting a U.S. based salary.

A 70 cent meal in China does not have the nutritional or quality/quantity equivalent of the US $10 meal. A 70 cent meal in China would be equivalent to paying $10 in the U.S. for a meal consisting of ramen noodles and a few cooked vegetables.

Sure, these workers get to pay a "low" 10% on housing compared to you and I paying 25% or more for our housing-- I don't know about you, though, but I don't live with 5 to 7 other people in a single room, sharing bathrooms and other communal areas. For my 25% I'm living in a 3 bedroom house with 2 and a half bathrooms and the entire place is only shared with one other person.

It is not a fair comparison to use only bare minimum basics in determining the equivalency to the cost of living between two countries. Okay, so some will offer that these workers pay 70 cents for their meal, compared with $10 in the U.S. Do you think that televisions, computers, iPads, etc. in China cost 7% of what they retail for in the U.S.?? How about cars, or even bicycles/motorbikes?

There's a reason why you and I aren't anxious to pack our bags and move to China and enjoy 70 cent meals and 10% housing... 1) the QUALITY is not the same, and 2) everything besides the basic minimums costs the same or more than it does in the U.S., therefore a degraded salary can't pay for those sorts of things you and I enjoy.

(I live in a small country in Southern Africa... a "developing" nation. A Windows laptop here with the equivalent of last year's specs costs about twice as much as a NEW 2012 model laptop in the U.S. Same goes for TVs and other electronics. Cars? Try $25,000 to $30,000 for a Ford Focus or similar. The average factory worker here earns the equivalent of $150-$200 a month [coincidentally they tend to be Chinese operated garment factories]). The average minimum wage worker here can't afford a car. The average minimum wage worker in the U.S. can.

This is not about Apple or any single company-- it's about the inequities of the global economic system. The harder you work, usually the less you get paid. :-(

In the other parts of Foxconn there is this guy that beats a big drum that everyone has to row in sync with. Stun guns applied randomly keeps everyone working feverently on the edge of their chairs. The sign above their work area reads, (Google Translation) "Work will make one Free."

I was laughing along for the first two sentences, as your comment appeared very promising. But the last sentence is a step too far. Some things do not belong in a joke. Ever.

Very labor intensive! The same factory in the US would be done very differently.

It would be the same. Try to find methods engineers in the USA, or workers who take their jobs seriously enough to learn to operate a multi-million $ piece of equipment or properly care for it. In the 80's my company was moving complex, highly automated lines out of the USA. Now the USA is not given a thought. The US labor force is a symbol of drug and alcohol issues, difficult unions, inadequate qualifications, personal baggage and minds set on anything other than the job at hand. A difference would be higher failure rates and resulting higher warranty costs.

These gadgets just cannot be made by robots, not in the near future. There are no robots that can, by themselves, make the LCD screens, batteries and flash memory that go into these devices.

These robots just do not exist, whether in Japan, China, Korea, the US or anywhere in the world.

Even if these devices are made in the US, they will also be made by hands.

Not entirely true there - if you have a chance to view some footage of how silicon wafers are cut shaped and formed by Intel, or how BMW or Toyota robots assemble cars, you'd be amazed at the automation robotics can accomplish.

Note - China doesn't use robots like we do, because people at this point are cheaper than robots... And given there are 2-3 times more people in China than the US, you need to keep them employed...

A month's rent sharing a small company dorm with six other people, waiting in line to use a communal bathroom, several days of travel away from your home or any actual "town"? Working 10 hours a day with little to no time off, without so much as the ability to come home, spend time with friends or family, or ever save up any real money to make a better life for yourself?

I'm annoyed at Apple being singled out in these stories that have nothing to do with Apple, but let's not get ridiculous trying to compare these workers' living conditions to our own. If it were up to "certain people" US labor conditions would be back to what they were in the early 1900's.

A month's rent sharing a small company dorm with six other people, waiting in line to use a communal bathroom, several days of travel away from your home or any actual "town"? Working 10 hours a day with little to no time off, without so much as the ability to come home, spend time with friends or family, or ever save up any real money to make a better life for yourself?

I'm annoyed at Apple being singled out in these stories that have nothing to do with Apple, but let's not get ridiculous trying to compare these workers' living conditions to our own. If it were up to "certain people" US labor conditions would be back to what they were in the early 1900's.

It's really simple. If you don't like the living conditions, you don't take a job at Foxconn. What part of "personal choice" do you not understand?

By all standards, Foxconn pays well above market rates and offers working conditions better than the average in China. People are lined up begging for these jobs.

The fact that it doesn't meet U.S. standards is irrelevant. They don't live in the U.S. and we have no more right to force them to follow our standards than we have to force China to allow free elections. If you want to start playing that game, where do you stop? Is the U.S. enforcing slave labor because we work more than 35 hours a week (see France, for example) or because we don't give new mothers a year off with pay like Canada?

Different countries have different standards. End of story.

"I'm way over my head when it comes to technical issues like this"Gatorguy 5/31/13

The deburring highlighted in the video was not filing, filing is a similar, but different task.

Seeing the video, it doesn't seem so terrible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hill60

I would like to earn a months rent with only 10 hours of work.

I'm sure you could, if you divided your rented space into bunks like that and got room mates.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ascii

Very labor intensive! The same factory in the US would be done very differently.

Heavily automated or with illegal labor, or not at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by peter236

These gadgets just cannot be made by robots, not in the near future. There are no robots that can, by themselves, make the LCD screens, batteries and flash memory that go into these devices.

These robots just do not exist, whether in Japan, China, Korea, the US or anywhere in the world.

There may be some parts that need human intervention, but I don't know what about flash memory that needs any human intervention other than maintaining the machines that make & package the chips. I doubt each flash chip needs to be handled individually by a human. Batteries are pretty simple, the necessary human intervention in each battery is probably negligible at best.

It's really simple. If you don't like the living conditions, you don't take a job at Foxconn. What part of "personal choice" do you not understand?

By all standards, Foxconn pays well above market rates and offers working conditions better than the average in China. People are lined up begging for these jobs.

The fact that it doesn't meet U.S. standards is irrelevant. They don't live in the U.S. and we have no more right to force them to follow our standards than we have to force China to allow free elections. If you want to start playing that game, where do you stop? Is the U.S. enforcing slave labor because we work more than 35 hours a week (see France, for example) or because we don't give new mothers a year off with pay like Canada?

Different countries have different standards. End of story.

The minute it becomes more cost effective to run operations with automation, all those people will be sent back to their dirt poor villages in the countryside.

Cheap labor is steady work. Expensive labor is outsourced or automated. More Americans need to get that through their noggin.